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Update Status - 1/14/13 Topic

Posted by coach_deen on 1/20/2013 9:27:00 PM (view original):Norbert...I hope I make sense with this question. When the new engine is in place will we be able to use players abilities any differently? For example, if we put 2 TE's in the ND formation, and both have good speed, hands, elusiveness, etc., should we be able to throw the ball consistently & effectively? Will the formation have as much or more to do with the outcome as the players abilities? I feel like it would add to the game if we could change a players position and get more out of it than we're able to now. I think it would also make scouting our opponents more important. Right now we can look at their tendencies and that's about it. I believe it would be a better game if a coach could scout his opponents players attributes and get an advantage. If I'm not explaining this properly forgive me...and just pretend I never ask the question! (LOL)

I think the general idea of the question is about player ratings in the new engine and how you will be able to use them. The example of TEs with good SPD, HND, and ELU asks whether or not you should be able to throw the ball effectively (than if they had lower SPD, HND, and ELU, I'm assuming). I think most people would say this is something you should see in the CURRENT engine. Part of the problem with the current engine is that you really don't do anything with these good receiving TEs other than set them higher in your depth chart and hope your settings throw more to these guys to take advantage of them.

I'd be a little dishonest if I said the new engine was going to be perfect and all our wishes would be granted in a golden football utopia, but really I'm just hoping to get it better than it is now with the idea that we can improve as we go along. I'd also say I don't think any football sim can be perfect, at least not in the eyes of everyone that plays it. There are always going to be a few glitches or balance issues and those are things I hope we can take care of a little quicker than we have in the current engine, but balancing is difficult. I don't want a "hand it off and a cloud of dust" game nor do I want a "pass, baby, pass" game. I'd like to see us having to make decisions like "against this team, I want to pass more and against this other team, I want to rush more".

So to answer your question with regard to the new engine, there is a new level of control over setting up your team. In the case of the TEs, having good receiving skills will help you in setting up plays where you have your TE going out for passes. You can't say specifically to target a TE, but you can set up a formation that has the TE pass distribution higher and set a play to pass more to those areas and that will give you a higher chance of passing to the TE. A TE can either be set up to block at the line or go out on passing routes. The blocking setting is something I have in that I fully intend to change with feedback during beta, so what you see at the beginning of beta might be different than where we end up. But regardless, there is a distinction between a TE blocking at the line and one running routes and those should have an effect on the play. You might not see the direct effect in each single play, but overall you should see a difference. The effectiveness of how well those receiving TEs do or how much they effect your passing game will also depend on the defense you are facing. If you have great receiving TEs and you have them involved in the passing, the defense might be set up to match them with great defenders. There will be a lot more dynamics to the match ups for each play which is another reason it's a lot more difficult to balance than the current engine.

One of the limitations of the new engine is the degree of control. There will be more control in your settings than there are now, but there are also some assumptions in the settings. For instance, a player slot that is set to a CB role will cover receivers as they run their routes, so will act pretty much like a man-to-man coverage. In the current engine, these guys are pretty much set to some semblance of zone coverage where your tendency affects their positioning some. This change is balanced by Safety positions that play more of a zone coverage which is affected by a "Short, Medium, Long" setting. The limitation in these settings is that you can't really fine tune your match ups. You can't say you want a certain DB to cover a certain WR. You can't set DBs to zone coverage. You will still set your defense based on offensive formation and situation.

So the way you take advantage of good receiving TEs on your team is to set them up in the formations and the play in the playbooks to get more passes. The better receivers you have out on the field when you are passing, the better your chances of successful passes. You should see a difference in passing results with good receiving TEs. If you see your opponent has good receiving TEs, you might adjust to get your best pass coverage LBs on the field and set up your defense to shorter passes (assuming the TEs get more short passes). So hopefully with the new engine you do see some advantage to really building your game plans to your players or recruiting for certain strengths, and you also find a reason to take a little closer look at your opponent.

Probably not exactly what you were asking, but hopefully some good information.

Posted by coach_deen on 1/22/2013 10:37:00 AM (view original):Sorry Norbert, but I have another question. There is a post on the "time clock". Is there any chance that the new update will allow us any flexibility with the pace of the game? Thanks in advance...

Currently the only changes in the pace of the game with clock management will be to run the clock or conserve the clock. These are set automatically in the current engine based on score and time. The new engine will tie these to your game plan settings, so you can tie them to conditions.

Originally, I was going to allow you to set this on your Main Playbook, but after review, the Main Playbook will be locked to "Normal" clock management. I had ideas to allow you to adjust your "Normal", like having a "Normal - Slow" and "Normal - Fast" option but I think those could cause more problems than they solve. I think the most desired change would be to implement a hurry up offense, but that conveys more than just a change to clock management and I'd really want to work on all that that would affect rather than throw something in that seems like hurry up offense but doesn't perform anything like you would expect.

It's looking like there won't be pass distribution settings with the new engine.....which makes me very sad. I thought that was something that was done right with GD1.0 and was going to be re-implemented in GD3.0, no?

So the way you take advantage of good receiving TEs on your team is to set them up in the formations and the play in the playbooks to get more passes. The better receivers you have out on the field when you are passing, the better your chances of successful passes.

Honestly, to me, this looks to be no different than what we have now, get the best group of guys you can and throw them out there. In GD1.0, if we had a stud WR or TE, we could adjust the distribution percentage to target that player more often.....and I could've sworn that's what we were headed back to with GD3.0.

Posted by bhouska on 1/22/2013 1:14:00 PM (view original):It's looking like there won't be pass distribution settings with the new engine.....which makes me very sad. I thought that was something that was done right with GD1.0 and was going to be re-implemented in GD3.0, no?

It's not implemented exactly how it was in GD 1.0, but it's a much closer approximation of what we had then and *certainly* better than the no-control settings we have now.

I'll need to talk with norbert about how the mechanics of it all work, but I think we'll be able to create basically the same passing dynamic we could in GD 1.0... if not even more flexible/controllable.

So the way you take advantage of good receiving TEs on your team is to set them up in the formations and the play in the playbooks to get more passes. The better receivers you have out on the field when you are passing, the better your chances of successful passes.

Honestly, to me, this looks to be no different than what we have now, get the best group of guys you can and throw them out there. In GD1.0, if we had a stud WR or TE, we could adjust the distribution percentage to target that player more often.....and I could've sworn that's what we were headed back to with GD3.0.

I can't say I like the words "higher chance" being thrown about by the developer.

Posted by bhouska on 1/22/2013 1:14:00 PM (view original):It's looking like there won't be pass distribution settings with the new engine.....which makes me very sad. I thought that was something that was done right with GD1.0 and was going to be re-implemented in GD3.0, no?

The 1.0 pass distributions were set on formation depth charts and those depth charts were fairly simple. With those settings, you could control that a single player be more likely to be the target of a pass, but the downside was that having one or two players resting could vastly change the dynamic of that play.

With the new engine, the pass distributions are set on each player slot on each formation. For instance, you could have one WR slot set to get most of the deep passes and another one set to get most of the short passes. When using that formation in a playbook, if you set the play to target mostly deep, then that first WR would get most of the passes and if you target short, the second one will. You could also balance the passing to distribute it more evenly, allowing your faster deep WR to get the ball when throwing deep and your slower, stronger WR get the ball when throwing short. The way to get the right player in the right spot is through depth charts.

You can also set up multiple sets for each formation which means you can tailor the pass distribution and personnel (through depth charts) for a certain formation to put in one setting you can utilize when setting up your playbook.

The difference between the 1.0 distributions and the 3.0 distributions is in 1.0 you had great control over each single player with regards to overall passing, while in 3.0 the player's tendency to be the target will be the combination of formation settings, depth charts, and playbook settings. But in the end, once you get used to how those all work together, you will be able to have even more control over pass distribution than you had in 1.0.

I know you guys are talking more substantial issues than the cosmetic one I am about to bring up, but it would be swell if there was a more detail section on the PBP that showed which gameplan setting (my own, not the other coaches) it pulled the formation and playcall from rather than my lazy a$$ trying to remember it and flipping back and forth.

Norbert...Thank you for answering our questions and explaining things as clearly as you are. You have me so fired up over the update I've already had my boss threaten to make whatif unavailable on our computers at work! Won't happen though, I'm the head of his tech dept.! (LOL)

Lets talk OL. Will we be abule to control witch OL that I use for each play that I set up for each formation in my playbook? An example would be I Formation Pass and I Formation Run. I do think that one OL player might be better at blocking pass plays than run plays. Will I be abule to set the OL as I see fit?

Posted by fermor332002 on 1/22/2013 4:29:00 PM (view original):Lets talk OL. Will we be abule to control witch OL that I use for each play that I set up for each formation in my playbook? An example would be I Formation Pass and I Formation Run. I do think that one OL player might be better at blocking pass plays than run plays. Will I be abule to set the OL as I see fit?

Yes. In 3.0, you will have one depth chart for each position role. For OL, we currently have a general OL role, OT role, OG/C role, and 2 user roles that you can use however you see fit. You could use the 2 pre-defined OT and OG/C roles for rushing linemen and the 2 user-defined roles for passing linemen. Then when setting up your formations, you can set up a formation to pull from the rushing linemen depth chart or the passing linemen depth chart. So when selecting your plays in your playbook, if you want a pass oriented play, you would set it to use the formation set that uses the passing linemen depth charts.

The logistics of moving OL on and off the field is something that we will ignore for now. If we ever work on an update where players moving on and off the field affect anything, we will address that then.

This is another case where I think we have limitations, and we would have had them in 1.0 as well, in that in real life if a team were this specialized with their personnel, the opponent could key off the personnel changes. It would be nice to be able to adjust your plays based on personnel, but that's way too much maintenance for something we are already expanding, so maybe down the road we can revisit the idea.

I like all this, but it "feels" like this is going to result in bigger advantages for the offense, creating a bit of an "unbalance". That may just be because I have not read, or has not been posted, anything about the defensive formations and player settings.